Dance with the Devil

when she frowned.
        Katherine got her spanking shortly thereafter.
        But the next day, she sneaked away on the picnic with the others. The house parents chaperoning the affair never reported her disobedience to Mrs. Coleridge, for they sympathized with her desperate search for happiness.
        From that moment on, Katherine's life had been shaped by the principle of optimism.
        Until Owlsden.
        Owlsden had bled away her positive outlook over the period of only a few days until now, alone in her room, she could summon forth only one optimistic image: Michael Harrison. He represented hope to her -not only hope of getting away from this cold, dark house, but hope of returning to her former attitude of cheerfulness. Mike was always happy, it seemed, always full of hope for the best. Perhaps, with him, she could manage to regain her optimism and face life as she had always faced it before: with hope for the next day. With Michael, everything would return to normal again. She could still recall the warmth of his kiss…
        As if she had been placed outside the normal stream of time, the minutes passed in agonizingly slow order, each one stretched into an hour.
        She tried to read the book she had carried up from the library and could not get interested in it, tried to eat something and could not, tried to nap and could not keep her eyes closed. She kept wondering if someone had unlocked and opened her door while she was not looking, and she would open her eyes to survey the room and be certain of her solitude.
        At a quarter past nine, only an hour and a half since she had spoken with Michael, the lights in her room shut off, plunging her into a deep and disquieting darkness.
        She rolled out of bed and slipped into her shoes, felt her way to the door. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to the lack of light, though there was nothing out of the ordinary to be seen.
        At the door, she listened carefully.
        For a moment, there was only silence. Then, Lydia called out to someone-and was answered by Mason Keene.
        “-all over the house,” he finished saying.
        Katherine opened her door and found the second floor corridor in complete darkness.
        “Lydia?” she called.
        “Here,” the older woman said. She sounded as if she were only a few yards farther along the hallway. From the quaver in her voice, it appeared she was more than a little on edge. She sounded, too, as if she expected someone to leap at her from the unrelieved darkness in the almost windowless corridor.
        “What's happened?” Katherine asked. She kept her back to the door of her room, her hand against the doorjamb to keep her position in mind.
        “I think, perhaps, that a fuse has blown,” Mason Keene said, drawing closer to her, though still invisible.
        She wished that she could see him. She did not like the idea that his eyes might have adjusted to the dimness more readily than hers and that he had an advantage, for she had now come to fear nearly everyone in Owlsden, even the reticent Keene couple.
        “Or else the power lines are down,” Lydia said.
        “Heaven forbid,” Keene said, almost at Katherine's side now.
        “Has that happened before?” Katherine asked, squinting in the direction that Keene seemed to be coming from.
        “Now and again, during the most rugged storms,” Lydia said. “And this one seems to be a beauty, doesn't it? Listen to that wind.”
        Katherine realized how loud the wind was, even within the thick walls of the mansion. For a time, she had lost the sound of it, had let it become a gentle background roar of which she was unaware.
        “Well,” Lydia said, “we'd best break out the supplies of candles and get used to living primitively for a while.”
        “I've found a closet,” Mason Keene said a moment later, pulling open a poorly oiled door close at Katherine's left hand. “I'll have some light for us in a moment.”
        “Poor light, but something anyway,” Lydia said. She sounded as if she would dearly welcome even the meagerest relief from this Stygian dark. What, exactly, was she afraid of? Alex?
        “It's not the lack of light, but the lack of heat that we'll soon begin to notice,” Keene said. “The furnace starts up electrically, you see. So we'll have to build fires in the fireplaces downstairs and keep to as few rooms as possible.”
        “How long will it